Getting Assets into Your Media Composer Project

How to do it...
These are the steps to keep the Capture Tool active after logging a clip:

1. Open the Capture Settings by either of the following methods:

‰‰ In the Project Window, select Settings tab | Capture Settings
‰‰ Right-click on Capture Tool and select Capture Settings…

2. In the Capture Settings window, click on the tab labeled as General.

3. Deselect the setting labeled as Activate bin window after capture.

Even though the name of the setting refers to capturing, this works
for logging as well (that's why it's a bit of a hidden tip).

See also
ff The Logging clips tip: Logging from the keyboard recipe earlier in this chapter

Quickly calculating total duration of clips

(or any items in a bin)
After logging many clips you'll Batch Capture them. However, it's helpful to know the
total duration of all the clips added together so you can make sure that your drive can
accommodate that amount of media.

How to do it...
Below are the steps to calculate the total duration of selected clips:

1. Select all the clips that you want to calculate the duration for. Methods include Shift +
clicking to select a range of clips, or going to the Edit menu and choosing the Select-
All command.
2. Right-click on one of the selected Master Clips.
3. From the menu select Get Bin Info.
4. The Console window will open.

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5. There will be an entry in the Console that reads Total duration of selected items:.
The duration is displayed as Hours:Minutes:Seconds:Frames (refer to the
screenshot below).

There's more...
This is also useful for calculating the total duration of multiple sequences (for example, if your
movie or TV program is still divided into separate sequences for each act).

Combining available drive space and/or

controlling where media is stored
The Capture Tool has a feature that lets you create a Drive Group that designates more
than one drive for Media Composer to be used for media storage. This is helpful in the
following situations:

ff You want to make sure that the media files go to the drive(s) that you want when one
becomes full, rather than Media Composer simply selecting the drive that happens to
have the most free space
ff You have a large amount of media to capture but there is not one single drive that
has enough space
ff Making a Drive Group is especially helpful when you want to leave the Capture
process unattended

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Getting Assets into Your Media Composer Project

How to do it...
1. Open the Tools menu | Capture Tool.
2. Click on the Drive Selection menu. It's located directly below the Bin Selection menu
and the Resolution Selection menu (refer to the next screenshot).

3. From the Drive Selection menu select Change Group….

4. A dialog window will open, listing all the available drives.
5. Press cmd/Ctrl and click to select your desired drives.
6. Press the OK button.

See also
ff If you're Batch Capturing, also see the Making sure your Batch Capture continues
without you recipe
ff The Quickly calculating total duration of all logged clips (or any items in a bin) recipe
may be helpful as you'll generally want to determine how much space is required for
your media

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